Santa Monica Studio Update: New Site, New HQ

Hi everybody, my name is Shannon Studstill, Head of Studio at Santa Monica Studio! It’s hard to believe we started this studio 14 years ago with Sony veteran Allan Becker, who now heads up Sony Japan. The original core team formed together in a bunch of small cubed offices at PlayStation’s old headquarters, in what was the former 989 Studios. It was here that our small team established the foundation and vision for a new studio.

It was clear the walls at “989” mixed with the good folks focused on the corporate business proved to be a not so artistic environment to foster our much needed creative culture. We needed to create games in a space with no walls, away from the daily “business”, where our collaboration as a creative team and family, would lead us to incredible designs.

Now 14 years later with 47 games published at this studio here in Santa Monica, it definitely feels like we made the right decision. As we continue our expansion, we’re preparing to say goodbye to this long-time home, and move into a new cutting-edge facility that will meet the needs of our growing team for the next era of Santa Monica Studio.

We won’t be moving far, actually — just a few miles south to Playa Vista (Check it out on Google Maps). For old-timers at Santa Monica Studio, especially those with us since Day 1, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time we moved into an early 1900’s train station — yes, our current home is an old train station — and it felt like new. There are so many great memories over the course of the last decade as we’ve grown to occupy this entire building, from a team that started with 16 people, to a bustling studio family over 220 strong.

Our current building and the atmosphere that it provides has proven to be a strong part of the fabric of who we are today despite earthquakes, chronic power outages, and even the occasional ghost sighting (watch our Halloween video). Within these battled walls we developed games like Kinetica and the God of War series, and fostered incredible partnerships with talented External Developers who brought classics like Journey, Sound Shapes, Fat Princess, and The Unfinished Swan to life.

Nostalgia aside, excitement for our new Santa Monica Studio is building. Our new facility dramatically increases the size of our open floor plan, which will allow all our disciplines to collaborate closer than ever before. Our “no walls” creative culture approach and unfettered collaboration between every person and department are central to our game development processes.

The facility will also house a state-of-the-art recording studio, along with being just steps away from a brand-new cutting-edge motion capture facility. The new mo-cap facility is being constructed from the ground up, literally adjacent to our new studio. It will be used specifically to facilitate the needs of all game development coming not only out of Santa Monica Studio, but our good friends at Naughty Dog as well.

The move couldn’t be coming at a better time. With PS4 off to a historic start in the US and Europe, our new facility in Playa Vista will enable us to meet the needs of this powerful new game platform. If you were impressed by what our designers and engineers pulled off with PS3’s technology, just wait until you see their capabilities on PS4.

Santa Monica Studio is always looking for great new talent to join our family. We are searching for people across all disciplines to work side-by-side with our phenomenal creative teams, alongside game directors like Stig Asmussen and Cory Barlog, both of whom have led the creation of our God of War games. You can also keep tabs on our hardworking creatives via regular updates on the new Santa Monica Studio website, with everything from game development insights and career advice, to updates on upcoming games like Hohokum and The Order: 1886.

Feel free to follow us on Twitter or Facebook for updates relating to our big studio move later this year, our games, and our team. Thank you for your continued passion in our games, and above all else, players first!

God of War 3 still remains my favorite ps3 game of all time and Warhawk my favorite online experience and IMO you are sony’s brightest first party studio with that said are you guys planning to bring the EPIC warhawk experience to psvita and ps4? When is Stig going to announce his next project? Will David Jaffe ever be back at the studio? Are you guys developing an exclusive title for vita? When can we expect to see The Order 1886 in action? Anyways congrats !!

@1 Its because the browser on PS4 doesn’t have flash (since flash stopped supporting anything other than PCs). Youtube will use HTML5 video but you have to request it (ie turn it on b/c not everything supports it). Google Youtube HTML5 for the link.

Actually, the only videos that show up via PS4 browser are HTML5 vids….meaning most often when a dev or the blogteam post a vid other than Twitch/Ustream, it quite often doesn’t play. People are right to activate YouTube for HTML5 vid, works gfreat after that, but I found other issues, such as audio streaming….for example, when the Blogcast was uploaded, I obviously can’t download it to my PS4, so I go to stream it via the SoundCloud widget and I get nothing, literally. This also happens when I visit the actual SoundClound and TuneIn websites, and while the sites are HTML5 enabled, theres no audio from any stream I click on. I’ve also tried using the mobile versions of websites like Sony suggested, and quite often, any website I try to visit using mobile versions turns out worse and less functional.

Please have the PS4 devteam look into resolving these issues asap, as the PS4 (aside from graphics) feels like a major downgrade in comparison.

Congrats on the new spot..hopefully we shall soon see a new GOD OF WAR..Syphon Filter..or a SOCOM like game..with Battlefield gameplay..PLEASE! we need this! Esspecially with the PS4..all that power with a 3rd person shooting game..will make the system fly off shelves!! :p